


Parallel

by robotsdance



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsdance/pseuds/robotsdance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully sharing a bed over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallel

**Author's Note:**

> I did not intend to show up to The X-Files 20 years late with bed-sharing fic, but here I am.

They arrive at the motel sometime after one in the morning. Scully had stopped checking her watch when they were still waiting to get the keys to their rental car, when it became clear that precise measurement of time would only dishearten her. Their check-in goes smoothly (mercifully this particular rural motel is not a hotbed of social activity tonight). The young woman behind the desk hands them the keys to rooms 11 and 13 and points them in the right direction.

Evidently, no part of their less than comfortable journey across the country has dampened Mulder’s enthusiasm about this case. He’s still telling her about the obscure map he managed to track down right before they went to the airport and all the ways he wants to cross-reference it with the five others he has carefully packed in his carry on luggage before they meet up with the detective who found a similar map on a murder victim the day before. Mulder had tried to look at his maps while they traveled but quickly found that neither the crowded airport gate nor the cramped airplane were ideal for examining old maps for details others may have overlooked.

She’s exhausted, wanting little more than to wash her face, get out of her shoes, and get some sleep, but she’d be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t almost as curious about the new map as Mulder is. So she drops her bag in room number 11 as Mulder hangs by the door eagerly telling her about the rumoured origins of map number three before they both head to the room next door.

There’s a small circular table in the room that is not big enough to properly display a single one of Mulder’s maps, much less the six he is determined to thoroughly compare so they spread the maps across the bed, put on their reading glasses, and get to work.

——

She wakes up to the sound of Mulder shouting her name and the side of the tent moving frantically, no doubt caused by him knocking urgently on the zippered door. The patter of the rain on the tarp above her would be soothing if it wasn’t punctured by Mulder’s increasingly strangled voice. She kicks her way out of her sleeping bag and grabs her gun and flashlight, half-expecting to find Mulder wrestling with the mythical creature he has them up in the mountains seeking.

When she unzips the door she finds Mulder soaking wet and looking particularly woebegone. She shines her flashlight down his body and on to the the lumpy green mass behind him that clearly used to be his tent, which he has dragged in its pathetic state to her door.

“What happened?” she asks, not because it isn’t obvious that his tent has suffered some sort of catastrophic failure, but because she finds she is looking forward to hearing him explain this.

“Scully,” he warns and shivers a little for good measure.

“Did Klaus turn you away?” she asks, nodding towards the tiny yellow one-person tent across the clearing that contains their sleeping guide.

Mulder gives her a look and begins to respond with some smart-ass comment but she has already moved aside to grant him entrance. As he hauls his tent to the edge of her door she squishes her sleeping bag into the opposite corner to keep it dry. She watches, amused, from the corner as Mulder rummages through the remains of his tent and emerges with his sleeping bag, which he throws unceremoniously to the side of the tent she is not occupying. He then wrestles his backpack from the tangled depths of wet nylon and kicks what’s left of his tent away before dramatically zipping the door closed.

When he turns to face her she smirks at the way his large frame bends to accommodate the low clearance of her two-person tent.

He kneels and unzips his backpack, “Gotta get out of these wet clothes,” he explains.

She nods and turns away, but not before he’s peeled off his shirt and dropped it by the door. It takes about a minute for Mulder to announce that he is decent and she turns back in time to watch him open the door enough to shove his wet clothes outside.

“So,” she says conversationally.

“Yes Scully?” he replies as he does his best to contain his stuff to the corner and starts to arrange his sleeping bag.

“Are you going to tell me what happened out there?” she asks as she spreads her sleeping bag down the other side of the tent.

“Is it not obvious?” Mulder asks.

“Well I do have a theory…”

They lie awake in their parallel sleeping bags whispering duelling theories as to what happened to Mulder’s tent as the rain continues to fall outside.

Recognizing that this could go on for a very long time, Scully eventually announces that she is going to sleep.

“No you’re not,” Mulder replies, clearly still a little hurt she shot down his last completely plausible idea.

“You’re right. I plan to lie here in the dark and discuss the finer points of tent construction with you until dawn,” Scully yawns.

“My tent construction is fine,” Mulder answers sleepily.

Scully is almost asleep as her mind forms the perfect retort. She wants to save it for the morning, when the birds will wake them up at the crack of dawn and they will both be disoriented and Mulder will have to retrieve his wet clothes from outside, but as soon as sleep takes her the phrase with the perfect blend of wit and sarcasm is already gone.

——

Stakeouts suck. No amount of FBI training could prepare a person for the boredom and discomfort of sitting around for days waiting for something to happen. In this case, something that might not ever happen, to happen. Something that she fully believes can not physically happen, to happen. But she rubs her eyes and watches just in case.

She supposes she’s gotten off easy. They are staked out in a cramped studio apartment with a single grungy window that faces an equally grungy building that is apparently haunted or possessed or something. They’re working in shifts. Right now Mulder is asleep beside her while she perches on the edge of the bed and watches the roof of the abandoned building across the street with barely concealed disinterest. At this point she’s secretly half-hoping some kids break in and start a fire. At least then they could do something.

Something shifts in her peripheral vision and she snaps back into full observation mode. She scans the empty building intently. She had been so sure- but there was nothing there now.

“Mulder,” she says.

“Did you see something?” he asks, sitting up immediately and moving towards the window.

She considers telling him no but opts to go with the truth, “I’m not sure.”

——

At her bedside Mulder is a barely contained wreck, sleepless nights and barely concealed fear mapped all over his skin like hairline fractures, charting exactly where he will break apart when the times comes. When _her_ time comes, she silently corrects herself. They’ve both been trying so hard to be strong for the other. Like two walls held up only by where they met in the middle as they fell, each supporting the other long after their own foundation has crumbled.

She’s too tired to talk, too exhausted to be who he needs her to be right now and there’s a twinge in her chest and a tightness in her throat when she manages to say that she feels terrible. He nods and clasps her hand and she closes her eyes to hopefully shield him from the onslaught of terror she is feeling as she squeezes back. She feels fragile, unbelievably fragile, and she will never, ever be used to that feeling.

She doesn’t want him to have to remember her like this but she doesn’t want him to go.

Normally she would never consider it. It’s stupid and needy and probably somewhere well past the ‘mostly just co-workers’ line in the sand that they dance around but she’s dying and he’s falling apart and they have so little left to lose.

“Come here,” she says faintly, eyes still closed, as she shifts over to make room on the bed as she tugs on his hand, “You’re exhausted.”

“It’s against the rules,” Mulder replies as he follows the gentle pull of her hand anyway, leaning closer to where she lies but going no further.

“Shhhhh,” Scully hushes him as she exhales, “Just for a bit. Please.”

She hears the moment he surrenders and steps out of his shoes. He removes his hand from hers to take off his jacket and she opens her eyes to watch him drop it on the chair beside her. When he turns back to look at her he reaches for her outstretched hand but waits. She can feel him wanting to make sure he hasn’t misread something.

But she pulls him closer and he cautiously climbs on to the bed beside her. It takes a moment for them to settle. At first he tries (unsuccessfully) to take up as little space as possible which is so ridiculous a notion that she smiles weakly as he continues to attempt to arrange his limbs as if he isn’t significantly bigger than her. He rarely shies away from taking up space in her life, but this isn’t sharing adventures or motel room walls or secrets or a desk. This is her deathbed. She hopes he isn’t thinking too much about the symbolism.

He is, however, clearly thinking about how best to lie next to her so she moves into his space, just a little, just enough, and he responds by putting his hand on her arm and meeting her in the middle.

“Better,” she sighs into the quiet space between them. It was not a question, but she is grateful he replies as if it was. Grateful he lets the illusion that this is mostly about him being tired and not about her dying stand unchallenged.

She is worried about him. She had intended to leave some notes around the office. Just little teasing notes for him to find to make him smile some day in the future when she wasn’t around to do it personally, but she hadn’t gotten around to it. She didn’t want him to find them too soon, and she certainly didn’t want to write them before it was necessary. She had felt (mostly) fine right up until she didn’t anymore and now it was too late. She traces her finger across his shirt and wonders what those notes would have said.

As they lie facing each other on the hospital bed she can feel him trembling as she breathes weakly against him. Mulder was correct: this is certainly against the rules. But as the minutes stretch and bend around them and no nurse comes by to gently remind them of hospital policy Scully aches with the understanding that she doesn’t have much time left. Beside her Mulder knows what she knows but still can’t quite make himself believe it.

But it doesn’t matter what he believes. She is going to die and it is going to break him but maybe, just maybe, they can hold each other together for a little while longer.

——

Neither of them says, “We are adults. We can share a bed. No big deal,” but it’s written in everything that happens in the space between hanging out discussing the case and actually going through the steps to go to sleep. They have lingered in each other’s rooms to the point of exhaustion before. One of them (almost always Scully) drifts off while the other pours over newspaper articles or old files or photographs or sea charts or paperwork. That’s normal. Either he discreetly returns to his room leaving her to sleep or he goes about his research until she wakes, stretches and tells him he should have woken her sooner to send her back to her room. He never does. He’s responsible for so much of her sleep deprivation that he doesn’t want to add to the statistic unnecessarily.

But this premeditated, unavoidable, they-will-be-sharing-that-queen-sized-bed-for-the-duration-of-the-night thing. This is new. They go about their evening routines as normal. She takes a bath and changes into her silk pyjamas while he watches reruns on television.

When the time comes, they lie carefully on opposite sides of the bed, his eyes on the TV, hers closed, as if all the unspoken things between them will leave them alone if they just avert their eyes.

By morning they’re smushed up against one another in the middle of the bed.

It’s not nearly as organized as spooning. She’s sort of nestled under his chin and one of his arms is flung over her haphazardly. There’s evidence of a moderate to severe late night blanket tug-of-war, the results of which had them both gravitating towards the middle of the bed where the struggle for blanket dominance gave way to something else.

There’s no clear winner, but there’s no loser either. They are both under the blankets when they begin to stir with the morning light.

They wake up too close together to be compatible with their base level of denial so they carefully remove themselves from each other’s space without a word and go about the rest of their day as if they aren’t still thinking about it.

——

He collapses against her as they both breathe hard, chests rising and falling rapidly as they struggle to see past the stars in their eyes. They come back to reality slowly, and it’s quite a while before they’re able to collect themselves enough to start surveying the wreckage.

Mulder is a sweaty and sated disaster in the best way, his hair artfully disheveled from the way she had been raking her fingers through it. She had made short work of his button-down shirt and tie, but the t-shirt he wears underneath is still mostly on (she had clawed it out of the way to drag her nails roughly down his back). His pants are bunched around his left ankle (she remembers frantically undoing his belt and shoving his pants down past his hips), and she’s not 100% sure he managed to get both of his shoes off before they hit the bed.

She has no doubts that she’s mirroring, if not exceeding, his level of disarray. She’d gotten her pants off in a hurry once they were through the door (a team effort) and her blouse is open (she wonders how many buttons are missing) but her bra is still technically on (though thanks to Mulder it is no longer fulfilling its primary function). Beyond that, she’s sure she’s a mess but she feels fucking spectacular.

“So,” Scully says when it’s time to say something, as she brushes a strand of damp hair off his forehead.

“So,” he replies, because what else could he possibly say, his thumb still tracing the curve of her jaw.

“That was-”

“Yeah”

He rolls off her and she tumbles after him as they burst out laughing together, revelling in the absurdity of everything that led them here.

——

She anchors him as he sways and crumbles against her, refusing to let him drift away from her in his grief. The night is a brutal one, overrun with sorrow and anger and despair and a hundred other things they can’t quite find words for. She stays with him on the couch for what must be hours.

“You should get some sleep,” Mulder tells her without looking at her.

“So should you,” she replies.

They silently agree to move to the bed for the other’s benefit, each hoping that if they just lie down the other will get some desperately needed rest.

Scully acts as the big spoon, curling herself securely around Mulder. There are long stretches of thoughtful, devastating silence, punctured only by quiet words when Mulder needs to hear Scully’s voice. As ever, she answers his questions with the truth.

——

It’s significant when they just casually get ready for bed together, undressing on opposite sides of his bedroom out of sleepiness rather than as part of shared motivation to get naked and horizontal with each other as fast as possible. She borrows a pair of his boxers and one of his t-shirts to sleep in and he can’t help but tell her how beautiful she is.

It’s been a particularly long week (not that it would even make a top ten list given their history, but they’re still feeling it weigh upon them). Mulder tucks himself around her and she snuggles back against him and their conversation meanders pleasantly until they drift off to sleep.

——

She’s lying on her stomach on the jumble of bedsheets and he’s lounging beside her. One of his hands is propped under his head and the other making leisurely passes up and down her bare back. He grazes his fingers gently across her skin, pausing to trace the outline of her tattoo. He circles it with care as she exhales before trailing his way back up her spine.

She could get used to this.

——

“You’re so alive,” she whispers mostly to herself, her hand over his heart, like she needs to keep reassuring herself that it’s true.

“Mhmm,” he murmurs in response, “So are you.”

And she wants to tell him how hard it was without him. How she certainly didn’t feel fully alive until she knew he was some broken version of okay. How she woke up every day like half of her was missing, how her world kept slipping out of focus without him in it. She wants to tell him how afraid she is, for their baby (she prays every night that it is his. It has to be his. He is the only option that isn’t some terrifying plot and she refuses for any more of her life to be consumed by conspiracy). She wants to tell him how terrified she is that she has already used up a lifetime of prayer and maybe it was enough to save him, but it won’t be enough to help their child.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t tell him for the same reason he only changes his shirt when she’s not in the room. He doesn’t want her to see the still-healing scars on his chest the way she can’t quite show him the grief carved on her heart. She understands that he doesn’t want her to know the extent of his suffering. He’s still hoping that if he keeps the trauma to himself maybe it too will miraculously fade like the rest of the marks on his body.

They’ve long since come to the understanding that they see the world most clearly when looking at each other. The problem now is that neither of them wants to bring the other’s recent experiences into sharper focus. Scully has no desire to be the lens that clarifies and reflects the full extent of the horrors Mulder faced and understands exactly why he doesn’t want to do the same for her.

So they lie in his bed, fully clothed and trying to forget, and just hold each other.

——

It takes a while for them to get used to only asking for one room when they check into a motel. They spent too many years existing in separate rooms for that to be anything other than their default. Yet here they are, each with a key to room number eight. This week’s motel is not much to speak of. The whole place is in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and the number on the door to their room is missing a screw so it hangs sideways.

Still, when they get inside and put their bags down at the foot of the bed, it feels like some version of home.

——

They’re as likely to wake up snuggled against each other, a tangle of sheets and limbs, as they are to wake up on their respective sides of their bed (or occasionally in Mulder’s case, couch). He sleeps poorly, always has, the combination of several lifetimes worth of traumas and any number of other factors. It’s not unusual for him to drift off beside her but then wake up in the middle of the night and migrate towards the couch. On the mornings she finds him asleep on the couch in front of the TV, she’ll brush the hair off his forehead and make sure he’s warm enough. Most of the time if he sleeps on the couch he makes sure to wake up early enough to slip back into bed beside her. When she wakes up and they are spooning with some degree of competence she knows that Mulder was awake before her, either returning from a late-night nap on the couch or just wanting to linger beside her.

She too has suffered far more than her fair share of traumas. It doesn’t usually manifest in her sleep patterns, but when it does he’s there to help keep the darkness at bay. If she wakes up on a bad night for both of them and he’s already relocated to the couch she’ll go join him there. He’ll move over so they can curl up together and watch bad movies until the sun rises.

If they both spend the whole night in the same bed there’s always the possibility that they’ll wake up in some artistic but hilariously impractical arrangement. She wonders sometimes how they can be so in sync when they are awake, but sleep like they are imitating drunk starfish half of the time.

Sometimes, when she’s the first one up and she doesn’t have to leave for work, she takes up the spooning initiative, shifting up against him and wrapping her arm firmly around his waist. She holds him close and dozes until he wakes and murmurs his approval.

Emerging from sleep in their bed still feels gloriously mundane. Whether they are untangling themselves from each other or grumbling about the alarm clock when she has to go to work or shifting closer together on a lazy Sunday morning as they smile and their hands begin to wander. It’s the kind of untroubled routine that has been stolen from them a thousand times over. But against all odds, every morning they wake up, alive and together.

And as always, every act of quiet love in their shared lives is nothing short of a miracle.


End file.
